The NHL’s waiver wire opens for business on Thursday

In a sign that the National Hockey League’s regular season is rapidly approaching, the league’s in-season waiver wire begins to take effect as of noon MT on Thursday. The waiver wire is an important process that regulates how NHL players who have progressed past their entry-level deals (for the most part) move up and down to and from the American Hockey League.

Here’s our annual Flames waiver wire primer!

So, you know how when you’re having a big group meal, you ask everybody if anybody wants the last slice of pizza or the last spring roll before grabbing it for yourself? Well, that’s essentially how waivers work.

The system is designed to keep experienced NHL players within the NHL by offering them up to the other NHL clubs before their own team is able to assign them to the minors. Rather than giving teams a chance to stash talent within their farm system, they’re offered up to everybody else first… like the last slice of pizza.

Teams are ranked in a waivers priority list in reverse order of last season’s standings. After November 1, this switches to the current season’s standings. The claiming team pays a small waiver fee and then gets the player’s rights. A claiming team has to have an NHL roster spot for a player they claim, though if they’re the only team putting in a claim they have the ability to send them directly to the AHL without going through the waiver process again.

(Over at CapFriendly, they get into the nitty gritty.)

As of Thursday morning, the Flames have 55 players in training camp.

Try-outs (2): Mikkel Diotte and Jonathan Aspirot

AHL contracts (7): Brett Sutter, Mitch McLain, Alex Gallant, Mark Duarte, Jarrod Gourley, Matt Radomsky and Connor Murphy

Unsigned draft choice (1): Etienne Morin

The first three categories are players that can’t make the opening roster given their current contractual situations. The last two categories are players that can make the team.

On NHL contracts, waiver exempt (16): Matt Coronato, Jakob Pelletier, Samuel Honzek, William Stromgren, Connor Zary, Parker Bell, Cole Schwindt, Rory Kerins, Ilya Nikolaev, Adam Klapka, Lucas Ciona, Yan Kuznetsov, Ilya Solovyov, Jeremie Poirier, Brady Lyle and Dustin Wolf

On NHL contracts, requiring waivers (29): Jonathan Huberdeau, Nazem Kadri, Andrew Mangiapane, Mikael Backlund, Blake Coleman, Elias Lindholm, Yegor Sharangovich, Dillon Dube, Walker Duehr, Adam Ruzicka, MacKenzie Weegar, Noah Hanifin, Rasmus Andersson, Chris Tanev, Nikita Zadorov, Jordan Oesterle, Dennis Gilbert, Oliver Kylington, Jacob Markstrom, Dan Vladar, Kevin Rooney, Emilio Pettersen, Ben Jones, Martin Pospisil, Clark Bishop, Dryden Hunt, Colton Poolman, Nick DeSimone and Oscar Dansk

In short: it’s impossible for the Flames to avoid placing anybody on waivers, because they simply have more waiver eligible players than NHL roster spots. We shall see who makes the cut and who’s placed on waivers between Thursday and when teams are required to have cap compliant opening rosters on Monday, Oct. 9 at 3 p.m. MT.